LIMITED ACCESS
I got a nasty-ass post-Christmas present from the day job. The head of the MIS department informed me that corporate policy regarding 'Net access through the firewall/T1 line had changed, and the only people who should have access were (a) project managers, (b) team leaders, or (c) anyone who went through "proper channels" to apply for net-ability. Since I'm neither (a) nor (b), and admittedly went "under the fence" to get hooked up to the Web, my Internet rights were getting cut off at the knees. Like immediately.
Talk about cold turkey.
Well, at least I got an "in case of emergency, break shrink-wrap" backup: AT&T WorldNet gives its long-distance customers a free year of I-net access, but only 5 hours per month free. (Hell, I used to burn up that much per DAY!) And after blazing along at Warp Factor 8 on the T1, snarfin' GIFs with impugnity and casually downloading Front Page betas at megabyte-per-minute clips, going back to a 28.8K modem seemed a trifle -- well -- pokey.
What all this did was to force me back to my days pre-T1, when all I had was an E-mail account. But if you're patient enough (and/or desperate enough!), there's a helluva lot you can do just with E-mail.
These days, you don't even need Web access to send/receive E-mail. Juno Online is one of several outfits that provides free E-mail service to anyone with a PC, a modem, and Windows 3.1 or better. They supply you with proprietary software to read and write messages, a buncha local dialups to keep the phone bill low, even an 800 access number if your nearest dialup is a toll call.
Did I say "free?" I did indeed. Juno sells advertising space to underwrite your E-mailing, so every now and then you get an ad banner after downloading a mail packet (fortunately, they're easily ignored and even more easily removed from your hard drive.)
Juno does have a coupla downsides; messages can't be bigger than about 60K, and you can't attach files (although the help file sez they'll consider it if enough people ask for it). Nonetheless, it works, works well, and the price is right. Hie yourself to a phone and call 1-800-654-JUNO for your setup disk. Better yet, if you can get the disk off'n a buddy or from a BBS/FTP site, go right ahead -- saves Juno the cost of mailing a disk.
"Okay, I've got E-mail. Now what?" Glad you asked. Would you like to retrieve files from FTP via E-mail? How about entire Web pages, graphix and all? You can do all that. Bob Rankin is the author of "Accessing The Internet By E-Mail -Doctor Bob's Guide to Offline Internet Access," a great introductory file to E-mail tricks. Send an E-mail message to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu; leave the SUBJECT line blank, and in the BODY of the note, put:
send usenet/news.answers/internet-services/access-via-email
Another Bob (Bob Appleton) has compiled several lists of free E-mailable stuff. Send notes to infomart@acy.digex.net, leaving the body of the message blank, and with the following commands on the SUBJECT line:
send email4u
send getit4u
send pix4u
(In case it's not obvious, you hafta send three messages to get all three dox!)
In the meanwhile, here's a way to mail-snarf some Web pages you might access on a daily basis. Let's say you want today's 100 random taglines, the current rock gossip from CyberSleaze, and the latest blast of vitriol from Suck. Send E-mail to agora@info.lanic.utexas.edu (leaving the SUBJECT line blank) with the following BODY text:
send http://www.brandonu.ca/~ennsnr/Tags/random100.html
send http://metaverse.com/vibe/sleaze/00latest.html
send http://www.suck.com/
You'll get text-only versions of those pages (with any hyperlinks footnoted) delivered to your In box. (This kinda gig DEFINITELY makes sense if you're being charged for Web access!)
Now, if your E-mail does support MIME attachments -- congratulations! You can slurp down an entire Web page -- complete with in-line graphics, no less! -- through E-mail, to be browsed off-line. (Great for those "picture of the week" sites, none of which we shall mention by name lest we go blind...) Bang off a virtual postcard to w3mail@gmd.de with blank SUBJECT line and the word "HELP" in the body to get the full poop.
My manager and I are trying to get
my T1 access back (my argument is that I've taught myself enough Web
authoring skills to be of value to the company!), but in the
interim, I can at least keep Da Rumpus ROM updated. That way, the three
or four of you out there who actually READ this stuff will remain happy... 
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